Today, wireless headsets are rapidly replacing standard telephones. A wireless headset typically communicates with a base station by the transmission of radio signals between the headset and the base station. Thus, a headset system can be said to comprise a headset and a base station. The base station may be connected to e.g. a telephone line or a computer having a communication program such as Microsoft Lync (Skype for Business) installed. The wireless communication between the headset and the base station of a headset system may use any of a number of different wireless communication protocols, such as Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), Bluetooth, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), or Ultra Wideband (UWB). At present DECT seems to be the most widely used wireless communication protocol for this application.
In e.g. office environments and call centres, i.e. so-called high-density installations, a large number of headset systems, each one comprising a headset and a base station, will typically be used within a limited geographical area. This is possible because each of the wireless communication protocols has a certain bandwidth allowing a given number of channels to be used simultaneously. As an example, in Europe the DECT frequency band is 1880 MHz-1900 MHz, which allows the use of 10 carriers with 12 time slots to be used in each direction, i.e. up and down stream. Thus, up to 120 channels can be provided in the European DECT spectrum, which means that up to 120 headset systems can be used simultaneously in the same area. In the US and Canada the DECT frequency band is 1920 MHz-1930 MHz, which allows the use of 5 carriers and provides up to 60 channels.
Although some of the other wireless communication protocols, e.g. Bluetooth, may provide a somewhat higher number of channels, the number is still limited to a level that may not be enough for large office buildings or large call centres. On top of this, the increased use of wide band speech in e.g. Microsoft Office Communicator further reduces the number of available channels, since a higher bandwidth is needed for each channel. Thus in Europe the number of available DECT wideband channels is only 60, while in the US and Canada it is reduced to 30.
A headset system comprising two different transceiver pairs as mentioned under Technical Field is known from EP 2 541 882. This system reduces density problems by providing the ability to transmit according to two different radio protocols.